Stephen L. Peterson* Ecological succession and climate change are pushing tundra as well as Arctic and subarctic Robert F. Rockwell† lowland plant communities toward increased woody vegetation cover. However, areas Christopher R. Witte† and along the Hudson Bay Lowlands that are over-grazed by hyper-abundant lesser snow geese David N. Koons‡ are experiencing drastic losses of grass, sedge, and ...

An automated ice-mapping algorithm has been developed and evaluated using data from the GOES-13 imager. The approach includes cloud-free image compositing as well as image classification using spectral criteria. The algorithm uses an alternative snow index to the Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI). The GOES-13 imager does not have a 1.6 μm band, a requirement for NDSI; however, the newly p...

Aerial surveys using direct counts of animals are commonly used to estimate deer abundance. Forward-looking infrared (FLIR) technology is increasingly replacing traditional methods such as visual observation from helicopters. Our goals were to compare fixed-wing FLIR and visual, helicopter-based counts in terms of relative bias, influence of snow cover and cost. We surveyed five plots: four 41....

A snow-covered forest mapping method for optical remote sensing is proposed. The method is based on linear sub-pixel reflectance modelling of the surface components snow, individual tree species and bare ground. Experiments are performed using a 100% snow-covered Landsat TM scene and aerial photos covering spruce, pine and birch forest in the Jotunheimen mountain area of South Norway. The refle...

Pink snow mold (Mirodochium patch) and gray snow mold [Typhula blight) are the most prevalent and destructive winter diseases on cool-season turfgrass in the northern United States. They are especially destructive in the Intermountain Northwest where deep snow cover may last four to five months. Pentachloronitrobenzene (PCNB, Quintozene) has been use to manage these diseases in turf on golf cou...

Actual and insolation-weighted Northern Hemisphere snow cover and sea ice are binned by latitude bands for the years 1973–2002. Antarctic sea-ice is also analyzed for the years 1980–2002. The use of insolation weighting provides an improved estimate of the radiative feedbacks of snow cover and sea-ice into the atmosphere. One conclusion of our assessment is that while a decrease in both areal a...

[1] Runoff generation in Alpine regions is typically affected by snow processes. Snow accumulation, storage, redistribution, and ablation control the availability of water. In this study, several robust parameterizations describing snow processes in Alpine environments were implemented in a fully distributed, physically based hydrological model. Snow cover development is simulated using differe...

In this study, daily maps of snow cover distribution and sea ice extent produced by NOAA’s interactive multisensor snow and ice mapping system (IMS) were validated using in situ snow depth data from observing stations obtained from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) for calendar years 2006 to 2010. IMS provides daily maps of snow and sea ice extent within the Northern Hemisphere using ...

A near-real time GMES-relevant monitoring system for semi-operational retrieval of snow covered area for hydrological and climatological applications has been developed in the Envisnow EC EESD FP 5 project. The system, using ENVISAT ASAR wide swath data from ESA AOE 785 and from the Kongsberg satellite station, geocodes and classifies Envisat ASAR data automatically, and produces SCA maps with ...